Sarah Pekkanen > Quotes

“You know the definition of a dysfunctional family, don't you? It's any family with more than one member in it.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, The Opposite of Me

“Sometimes following the path that looked the safest was what led to the most hurt...”
― Sarah Pekkanen, Skipping a Beat

“How do you know if you can really trust someone?" I finally ask.

Noah raises his eyebrows and takes a sip of his drink.

Then he looks into my eyes and the expression in his is so earnest I feel like he's answering from a deeply personal place.

"If you need to ask that question, then you probably already know the answer," he says.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, An Anonymous Girl

“When an individual trusts another sufficiently to expose the true self--the deepest fears, the hidden desires--a powerful intimacy is born.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, An Anonymous Girl

“She loved the way her city always sounded like it was celebrating.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, These Girls

“But then again, didn't all marriages carry thousands of hurts? Didn't husbands and wives injure each other all the time, leaving wounds both big and small, with snapped words or forgotten anniversaries or emotional buttons deliberately pushed? But thousands of kindnesses existed in marriages, too. The important thing was that the kindnesses triumphed over the hurts.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, The Best of Us

“One of them is lying. But who?”
― Sarah Pekkanen, An Anonymous Girl

“Sometimes silence is more effective tool to loosen information than a direct question; members of the law enforcement community often employ this tactic when a suspect is in custody.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, An Anonymous Girl

“The core truth of our marriage, the most important thing for me to remember, was that Michael and I loved each other. Our love had gotten pushed aside and bruised and buried, but it has always existed.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, Skipping a Beat

“Project Runway, chocolate and margaritas and suddenly all is right with the world”
― Sarah Pekkanen, Skipping a Beat

“The words just sprang into my mind. Maybe I'd never stopped loving Michael, but now it felt different. I loved him despite the injuries we'd inflicted on one another, because of the bad times as well as the good ones..... Our love was richer and bumpier and more complex than it had ever been before.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, Skipping a Beat

“Time is a chameleon. It's ever changing, cannily adapting to circumstances. It stretches out some tiny moments for an eternity. Then it shifts course and swallows up whole days, years even, as if they never existed. It's as slippery and elusive as water running through the cracks in a tightly cupped hand.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, The Golden Couple

“Sometimes the lies are debunked. Other times they’re so ingrained in the public consciousness they might as well be truth.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, House of Glass

“I believe evil is a natural force, like a hungry virus, perpetually swirling through the air and seeking places to infiltrate. Most of us bar the door against it. Others welcome it in.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, House of Glass

“What sadist had invented the concept of skiing? Kira wondered. Who was the first person to decide it would be fun to rocket shakily down an icy mountain on two pieces of metal with wind attacking your face and snow spraying into your eyes and people whipping all around, waving spiky poles like gladiators closing in for a kill? She was shocked lawyers hadn't shut down the sport yet; the potential for catastrophe was rampant.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, Catching Air

“People who endure childhoods like mine tend to go one of two ways, a therapist once told me. Either they try to give their kids the kind of parenting they wish they’d had, or they avoid children altogether.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, House of Glass

“She felt a lump form in her throat, and she swallowed hard. She wouldn't have this-the swollen ankles and pink cheeks and the feel of that glorious, curving belly under the palm of her hand-but she could still be a mother. That was the important thing.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, Catching Air

“Our minds do this all the time. They talk us out of things we don’t want to know.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, Gone Tonight

“But our kids don’t focus on the fact that we try as hard as we can to undo the mistakes of the previous generation. They don’t know how difficult it is for us to break the patterns we were steeped in during our formative years. They only see the errors we make. The ones taught to us, and the ones that are all our own.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, Gone Tonight

“Often, what we see in art is a reflection of us. Of our optics. Our mindset. Have you ever tried to read a novel and not enjoyed it, then gone back at another point in time and loved it? The story didn’t change. But you did. This is an insight into who we are at any given moment and what we bring to our unique intersection with art.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, House of Glass

“Time didn’t heal all wounds, but at least it layered buffers around them.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, The Perfect Neighbors

“The worst of humanity comes out in the shadows.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, An Anonymous Girl

“How did you know which life was the right one for you when there were so many to choose from?”
― Sarah Pekkanen, The Opposite of Me

“Sometimes following the path that looked the safest was what led to the most hurt,”
― Sarah Pekkanen, Skipping a Beat

“dangerous secrets are as corrosive as acid.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, The Perfect Neighbors

“Sometimes there is so much to say that words aren’t enough.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, Gone Tonight

“...it is as if a glimpse of your 13-year-old self briefly emerges.
That is the age when everything changes for you.
Every lifetime contains pivot points - sometimes flukes of destiny, sometimes seemingly preordained- that shape and eventually cement one's path.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, An Anonymous Girl

“Does he ever think of me? I wonder.
Enough, I tell myself. I need to move on.
But if I go home, I know I won't be able to sleep. I"ll be replayinf scenes from our final night together and what I could have done differently again...”
― Sarah Pekkanen, An Anonymous Girl

“The intellect does not reign supreme in matters of the heart.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, An Anonymous Girl

“People hurt each other all the time, both wittingly and unwittingly.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, The Opposite of Me